Conservative leadership candidate Jean Charest said Thursday he would not change Canada’s current gun laws, including a ban on “assault” firearms.
In a substantive interview, Mr. Charest said that when it comes to gun control, the focus should be on the trafficking of handguns from the United States. He pointed to the high number of recent shootings in Montreal and Toronto.
According to Mr. Charest, this is where Ottawa should devote its energy and resources, rather than regulating hunters and farmers. “I don’t own a gun, but I liked to hunt. And I think there should just be a common sense approach to all of this. »
Asked specifically about the Liberal government’s banning of some 1,500 models of firearms, Mr. Charest replied that he was “not seeking to modify the current laws”. “It’s not on my schedule,” he said.
Mr. Charest’s position seems to go against that of the Conservative Party. Opponents of the ban have recently called for it to be scrapped and for all money spent on it to be redirected to law enforcement and border services.
Remarks to this effect were made Thursday evening by leadership candidate Patrick Brown.
“I am the mayor in the Greater Toronto Area. I know from experience that the billions Justin Trudeau will spend to remove legally owned firearms would be better invested in police forces who desperately need them,” he wrote on Twitter.
A hot question
The Conservative leadership race has reignited the question of what gun owners want from Ottawa, as they make up a significant part of the party’s militant base, heavily concentrated in Western Canada. The related defense groups are also well mobilized and are already waiting firmly on Mr. Charest on this issue.
Supporters of candidate Pierre Poilievre in the race have also pointed to Mr. Charest’s past positions on gun control. Even before Mr. Charest officially entered the race, Jenni Byrne, of the Poilievre team, had treated him on Twitter as a “liberal” because when he was premier of Quebec, he had opposed Stephen Harper’s decision to end the federal long-gun registry.
Acting Tory leader Candice Bergen gained notoriety when she promised to scrap the register in 2009 with a private member’s bill. When Mr. Harper formed a Conservative majority government in 2011, the Manitoba MP helped dismantle the registry.
O’Toole had struggled
The current gun control battle being waged by the Conservatives is over the banning of what Mr. Trudeau calls “assault type weapons”.
On May 1, 2020, a few weeks after the deadliest shooting in Canadian history, in Nova Scotia, the Liberal government designated as prohibited more than 1,500 models and variants of “assault weapons” firearms. “. Mr. Trudeau had also undertaken to set up a buy-back program for these prohibited assault weapons.
The government had provided in May 2020 for a two-year amnesty period for gun owners covered by the ban. This amnesty period was therefore due to end next May, but Ottawa announced on Wednesday its extension of 18 months, until October 30, 2023.
Last year’s federal election saw the Conservatives wrestle with the issue of gun control. Then-leader Erin O’Toole courted gun owners and their advocates in the party’s leadership races in 2017 and 2020.
But midway through the election campaign last year, the leader backtracked on a promise in the party platform to repeal the Liberal ban on “assault” weapons. Mr O’Toole stumbled when Mr Trudeau hounded him on it during a live leaders’ debate.
After days of having to answer questions from journalists about his exact position, Mr. O’Toole finally inserted a footnote in the platform, to clarify that instead of repealing the prohibition, he would subject it to a review.